Ensuring your operation is running efficiently is key, but it’s easier said than done. The Analytics charts help you get a clear overview of farm data. Going one step further, our smart projections enable you to look into the future and plan ahead.
Projections give you an insight into your farm’s future productivity and efficiency based on past performance and upcoming changes. This enables you to get ahead of the curve and make better decisions to optimize your farm management. In this article we explain how projections are calculated and how you can use them to make better decisions.
How forecasting works
Projections are calculated based on multiple metrics from your farm. We factor in your herd’s production on a granular level by combining all available production metrics (like herd test, milk visits and shipped milk) for each individual cow. We also account for the impact of other metrics (like DIM) to make an accurate forecast. Based on this, we model individual cow profiles, which are then combined to give you aggregated farm-level projections.
Cow profiles
A cow profile helps us forecast her future milk production and components. We use tried and tested scientific research around dairy cow lactation and combine it with production data to build a profile for each cow.
The chart below shows how a cow profile looks like against actual milking data. This shows the cows production over the course of 3 lactations, with milking data as black dots while the cow-profile and projections are in green.
From Cow Profiles to Projections
After individual cow profiles are created, they are carefully aggregated to create a farm level picture of production metrics. The quality of these projections depends on many factors such as:
Percentage of the milking herd with usable milking data.
Access to cow level milk test data.
Accuracy of calving and dry off dates.
Having access to removal information.
Apart from these factors, it is also important to know that:
We make projections only on the portion of the herd with available cow profiles.
We don’t consider additions to the milking herd.
Removals from the milking herd are only used where available.
Future pregnancies for milking cows are calculated based off industry base line pregnancy rates.
How to use projections?
You can see projected metrics on the charts in Analytics and on the Farm Timeline
In Analytics:
Select a metric labeled Projections available to view the chart. You can select Custom dates at the top to view projections on a longer timeframe.
On the Farm Timeline:
Use the Projections toggle to switch them on. Now you will see three values for each metric:
Before - the value before you made the change
Expected - the value we forecast for this point in time if you hadn't made any changes (based on our projection)
After - the value at this point in time, after you've made the change
This allows you to compare performance with and without the change you made, to better evaluate the efficiency of your intervention.
Note that projections are only available for production metrics, so you can only turn them on for events like ration changes, which track milk yield, ECM yield, fat and protein content.